


Remember That?

by discountsatanism



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Almost forgot that, Gen, and. yep. that is basically why this is happening, davenport is mentioned exactly once, format: massive chunks of text that all start with conjunctions, guess that's no longer an issue hAH, i've been specifically avoiding commenting on fics so i can remain anonymous, massive spoilers, pan doesn't speak but he's there in spirit, the name Star Blazr being used as if it is how the name was intended to be spelled, the word 'planeship' used as if it is an actual word, this is titled as 'the only fandom i'm caught up on enough to write fic for because i'm poor'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:18:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discountsatanism/pseuds/discountsatanism
Summary: A list of every mistake Merle remembers making: the new, updated edition.





	Remember That?

Merle’s life has just been one massive, complex fuckup so far, spiraling past morbid humor and straight into horrifying irony, because he can’t do anything right. His family wants him to follow Pan, because Pan made the beaches and Pan _is_ nature, but he can’t, because his family is all expectations and gratefulness and he is a bitter kid who’s not sure he’ll make it past stubble and really doesn’t care, because he’s a fuckup. His teacher wants him to learn to be strong and to be his own person, but he can’t, because he’s too fucked up for a family and too fucked up to survive without one, so he ends up latching onto his teacher like the father he wanted to have and when it’s time to leave and be his own person he doesn’t know what the fuck to do. So he ends up hiding out in public places and it would be way, way too nice to say that he taught himself botany out of some deep passion. He just fell asleep next to one too many nerds and then decided that if he was too fucked up for Pan, learning about nature might be the one road to redemption that didn’t involve anything on the inside.

He’s good at biology, the same way you’re good at anything if it’s all you hear about for a century. He got better at biology, and for reasons he still can’t fucking fathom and doesn’t wanna try to, he gets a letter from an IPRE telling them they think he has potential, how about you join our team? and he scratched Merle Highchurch on the dotted line before he could question it and even more before he questioned it and then immediately stopped.

He gets really fucking good at biology then, and suddenly he’s deliberately making people uncomfortable again and flirting with anything that has facial hair, and then he’s saying that the name StarBlazr sounds rad for a planeship, and then he’s standing in a bright red jacket and boarding that planeship, and he thinks that maybe this is really it, that from now on his massive fuckup of a childhood is just his tragic backstory that he tells people in bars to let them know he’s tough.

He’s wrong, because not only is he a fuckup, he’s not exactly a prophet. This isn’t only just another fuckup up in a series that never seems to end, it’s quite possibly the _worst fuckup he’s ever made_. Merle Hitower Highchurch not only can’t worship nature for shit, he literally destroyed the entire thing. He killed nature. He’s killed nature a hundred times over.

Maybe forgetting meant an entire century was stolen from him, but maybe it was worth it if he got to forget that. If he got to forget the fuckup of a romantic heist that was the Merle & Davenport Attempt To Get The Light Of Creation(Read: Attempt), if he got to forget dying half the time, no, _over_ half the time, if he got to forget seeing planet after planet being destroyed, if he got to forget all the people he knew and the places he knew and everything that’s lost because of him. Maybe forgetting was the best thing that ever happened to him.

But hey, even if he forgot everything he ever helped destroy, he got to keep everything he did himself! Merle got to keep cutting and running from his family because he’d forgotten how hard it was to care all the time when you’d taught yourself not to, and then having to sneak back to see his own kids because he could only love them for a few hours at a time before the fear kicked in and he said something awful. He got to remember developing the job-getting strategy of just fucking showing up at a party rendezvous and informing them that he was a part of the group now and all the friends that got him.

It’s easier to pretend like he doesn’t remember, anyway. He’s just a bitter old dwarf with a rad wooden arm and a divine connection to Pan that turned out to be a red herring if he remembers, so he doesn’t. He forgets that he’s a healer, he forgets that he’s a father, and he does whatever he has to to keep the rose-tinted lenses he has pointed towards his past firmly on.

So when he remembers, when it all comes shoving back and he sees every single moment of those hundred years in perfect detail, he says the first thing he can think of.

“What the _fuck_ kind of god name is Marthammor Duin?”

**Author's Note:**

> i've been commenting as 'local shitty wizard' so you know who to blame for that now so, without further ado, apologies are in order:  
> 1\. i use the word fuckup seven times  
> 2\. i wrote this on no sleep and yes emotions so it's incoherent as fuck  
> 3\. this is basically me taking the one (1) clint quote that could possibly imply that merle is actually really bitter and zooming off into the distance with it  
> 4\. "merle is my favorite character" "why?" "plants"  
> 5\. just generally sorry


End file.
